Key of Valor
Page 50

She saw herself in the flyspecked glass, standing in the hard, unfiltered light, dust in her hair, on her cheek, with a wounded rag doll cradled in her arm.
Like the mirror, like the doll, she mused, she wasn’t anything special to look at, at the moment. But potential was the important thing. She was looking a little tired around the eyes, but that was nothing a ten-minute break with cucumber eye pads wouldn’t fix. She knew how to buff herself up, appearance wise. That was just routine, and a few tricks of the trade.
And she knew how to keep herself in tune inside, too. As long as she considered herself a work in progress, she wouldn’t stop trying to learn, to become, to make more of herself.
She wasn’t a sad Raggedy Ann who needed to be tended to. She knew, very well, how to tend to herself and those who needed her.
Kyna needed her, she thought. Kyna and her sisters needed her to find the last key to unlock their prison. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, give up until she’d done everything possible.
“Whatever it takes,” she said aloud. “I won’t walk away.”
The glass misted as she watched, a thin sparkle dancing over the pocked surface. Through it she saw herself. Then it was no longer her but a tall, slim young woman in green robes, a puppy in the crook of her arm and a sword at her side.
Fascinated, she stepped forward, reached up to touch her fingers to the mirror. And watched them slide into the glass. Shocked, she snatched them back, fisted her hand over her speeding heart.
The image in the glass remained, looking back at her. Waiting.
She wanted to bolt, could feel her legs tense for the rush to the door and away. But hadn’t she just promised? Whatever it takes. Closing her eyes for a moment, she struggled to steady herself. What Malory had told her about Brad applied to just about everything there was in life, didn’t it? You just did what came next.
Zoe gathered her courage, clutched the doll for comfort, and walked into the mirror.
She stood with her sisters under the bright wash of sunlight with the scent of the garden rioting in the air. Birds sang in a kind of desperate joy that lifted her heart.
In her arm, the puppy wriggled and twisted himself to lick her jaw. She set him down to romp for a bit and joined her laughter with her sisters’.
“We should teach him to dance.” Venora fluttered her fingers over the strings of her harp while the puppy leaped clumsily at a passing butterfly.
“What he’ll do is dig in the garden.” Bending, Niniane petted the pup’s head. “And be in constant trouble, just as he should. I’m so glad you found him, Kyna.”
“He looked like he was waiting for me.” Madly in love already, she crouched, tickling the pup’s soft, fat belly. “Sitting on the path of the forest as if saying, ‘It’s about time you got here to take me home.’ ”
“Poor little thing. I wonder how he got lost.”
Kyna glanced at Venora. “I don’t think he was lost. I think he was found.” She lifted him up, stood to turn in a circle while he yipped and wriggled with joy. “We’ll take care of you, and protect you. And you’ll grow big and strong.”
“Then he’ll protect us,” Niniane said and reached out to give the puppy’s tail a gentle tug.
“We have more than enough guards already.” Rubbing her cheek against the pup’s head, Kyna turned to look back across the garden to the two figures who embraced under the blossoms of a tree. “Rowena and Pitte are either watching us, or watching each other.”
“Our father worries too much.” Niniane set down her quill and lifted her face to the sky. A perfect bowl of blue. “How could we be safer than here, in the heart of the kingdom?”
“There are those who would strike the heart, if they dared.” Unconsciously, Kyna laid a hand on the hilt of her sword. “Who would harm our parents, our people, and our world, even the world beyond, through us.”
“I don’t understand the need for hate when there’s such beauty. And such love,” Venora added.
“As long as there are those like Kane and his followers there will be a battle between what is good and what is evil. So it is in all the worlds,” Kyna told them. “There must be warriors as well as artists and bards, rulers and scholars.”
“There’s no need for a sword today.” Niniane touched Kyna’s hip.
“For Kyna there’s always a need for a sword,” Venora said with a laugh. “But only look. Love is surely as valiant and true a weapon as steel.” She plucked her harp as she studied Rowena and Pitte. “See how they are together, as if they need nothing but each other. One day we’ll find that.”
“But the man I love must be as handsome as Pitte,” Niniane said, “and clever of mind.”
“And mine will be all that, but with the soul of a poet.” With a flutter of her lashes, Venora pressed a hand to her heart. “Yours, Kyna?”
“Ah, well.” Kyna tucked the puppy in the crook of her arm again. “Handsome, of course, and clever of mind, with that poet’s soul—and a warrior’s heart. And he must be the most skilled of lovers.”
They giggled together, as sisters do, gathered close, and didn’t see that perfect bowl of sky begin to boil black in the west.
Venora shivered. “It grows chilly.”
“The wind,” Kyna began, and the world went mad.
She whirled, her sword singing as she drew it from its sheath, as she stepped between her sisters and the shadow that spilled out of the woods.
She heard the screams, the vicious lashing of the wind, the shouts of those who ran to defend. She saw the sly slither of a snake on the tiles and the crawl of a blue mist.
And Kane, his eyes black with power in his handsome face, stepped out of the shadows. He raised his arms toward that boiling sky, his voice like thunder.
Even as she charged, sword held high, the pain ripped through her like vicious fingers, tearing at her heart and dropping her to her knees.
She saw him smile an instant before she was yanked from her own body.
In the attic, under the harsh light of the overhead bulb, Zoe stood again, with an icy pain in her chest and tears spilling down her cheeks.
“I hurt for them.” Zoe pressed her hands together on her kitchen table. “I felt what she felt—the emotions, the sun, the warm fur of the puppy, but I was still apart from it. I don’t know how to explain.”